A new chapter for Alden Richards

Asia's Multimedia Star and Box Office King Alden Richards has spent more than a decade dazzling audiences with his acting range and box-office clout. But this October, he added another title to his name: director.

- By ANNALYN JUSAY

His debut film, "Out of Order", a drama-thriller co-produced by his company, Myriad Entertainment, and Viva Films, premiered on Netflix on Oct. 2, after making waves at the Da Nang Asian Film Festival.

The film pairs Alden with Heaven Peralejo, Nonie Buencamino, Soliman Cruz, Andrea del Rosario, Joyce Ching, Nicco Manalo, Francine Garcia, and Yayo Aguila.

"Out of Order" depicts the fragile state of justice in the country. It tells the story of a young and broke attorney who is forced to defend his estranged father, a prominent lawyer accused of the brutal murder of a transgender person. The case draws him into a tangle of betrayal, broken dreams, and systemic corruption. As he battles inside the courtroom, he also wrestles with personal ghosts - encountering an ex-girlfriend (played by Heaven), now a determined public prosecutor, whose presence tests his convictions as much as the trial itself.

The ensemble cast, Richards emphasized, was crucial in bringing the story to life. "Walang hindi pwedeng wala dun," he said. (No role could be omitted; every character mattered.)

For Alden, the shift towards being a filmmaker was both daunting and liberating. He admitted that the first cut of the film ran three and a half hours.

"But because of Netflix standards, we had to trim down the sequence quite a bit," he explained.